Post sayings or stories from Buddhist traditions which you find interesting, inspiring or useful. (Your own stories are welcome on DW, but in the Creative Writing or Personal Experience forums rather than here.)

Now it is a law of nature that whenever lord buddhas manifest their
smiles, rays of blue, yellow, red, and white light, and those the color of
topaz, rubies, diamonds, beryl, sapphires, crystals, red pearls, right spiraling
conch shells, quartz, coral, gold, and silver emerge from their
mouths, some going downward and some going upward.

Those that go downward enter
the various hells down to the Avīci (Ceaseless Torture)
... Becoming cold, they fall in the
hot hells, and becoming hot, they fall in the cold hells. In this way, at
that moment, those rays of light alleviate the particular torments of
those beings who dwell in these various hells.

And so they think,
“Friends, have we died and passed away from this place? Have we been
reborn somewhere else?”

Then, in order to engender their faith, the Blessed One manifests a
magical image of himself for them to see. Seeing this magical image,
they think, “Friends, we haven’t died and passed away from this place,
nor have we been born someplace else. Instead, it’s this person who
we’ve never seen before; it’s by his power that our particular torments
are alleviated.”

Cultivating faith in their minds toward this magical
image, they then cast off that karma still to be suffered in these hells and
take rebirth among gods and mortals, where they become vessels for
the [four noble] truths.

[From Divine Stories p. 136; tr. by Andy Rotman]

Glorious one, creator of all goodness, Mañjuśrī, his glorious eminence!Manjushri-namasamgiti